The worst of today’s news media continue their unfair and inaccurate vilification of Hacking Team. The latest comes in the wake of a self-promoting essay by someone who claims responsibility for last summer’s attack on this company. The essay writer claims to explain how he executed the attack, but inaccuracies in his story only go to show he is not really as smart as he thinks he is.

Desperate for sensational stories, some publications routinely ignore two plain facts: Criminals and terrorists today routinely use Internet secrecy and end-to-end encryption to rob, kill and terrorize whole populations. Hacking Team provides a valuable tool that law enforcement and security agencies around the world use to keep citizens safe.

Instead of reporting this inconvenient truth, these websites and papers celebrate as some sort of victory the work of this vigilante who broke in to the company and stole documents and software. Their motives are the same as those of sensationalist writers of 150 years ago — get readers and let the truth be damned.

Fortunately, multiple law enforcement investigations are underway in several countries. We hope that the vigilante’s barging about his work will lead to his swift arrest and prosecution.

In the meantime, despite the best guess of some security experts who wrote that Hacking Team could never recover from the attack and despite the hopes of others, in fact, Hacking Team has restored our lawful surveillance product and developed new cutting-edge tools. At the same time, the company has overhauled and secured internal computer networks.

Hacking Team will continue to produce and provide world-leading software to help law enforcement authorities keep us all safe.